This proposal requests partial support for an international meeting on Myogenesis as part of the Gordon Research Conference series to be held in I1 Ciocco, Italy, May 16-21, 2004. The broad and long term goal of the conference is to increase our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of normal muscle biology and disease, with an emphasis on skeletal muscle but with strong comparisons to cardiac and smooth muscle. The specific aims of this meeting will be to convene 45 speakers that represent critical areas of muscle research with a total of 135 participants for a five day conference in a relatively isolated setting. The program will have a keynote address and nine sessions that broadly address current issues in somitogenesis, the generation of muscle cell types (skeletal, cardiac, and smooth), regeneration of muscle by muscle stem cells and satellite cells with critical comparison to the regeneration of complex body parts, signal transduction and cell cycle in normal muscle development and disease, and finally a direct discussion of human disease therapy. In addition, two evening poster sessions will permit broad contribution to these topics. The significance of this application is that the Gordon Research Conference on Myogenesis, scheduled to convene every three years, is a critical component of the yearly series of conferences that propel research in the international community of muscle researchers. The health relatedness of this application is that the discussions will define the questions that require experimental resolution in areas that affect human development, skeletal muscle development and disease, cardiac development and disease, smooth muscle development and disease, and cancer of these muscle types.